Loyola was named the No. 1 overall seed in the 16-team NCAA
Division I men's lacrosse tournament on Sunday night, and Baltimore
neighborhood rival Johns Hopkins wasn't far away on paper either,
coming in seeded right behind the Greyhounds at No. 2.

ACC champion Duke is the third seed, followed by fourth-seeded
Notre Dame. Virginia, undefeated UMass, Patriot League champ Lehigh
and North Carolina round out the top eight for the tournament,
which begins at noon Saturday when Duke hosts Syracuse in Durham,
N.C.

Denver, Princeton and Colgate grabbed at-large bids from the
selection committee along with the four ACC teams and Johns Hopkins
and Notre Dame. The Pioneers and Tigers, who lost to Yale in the
Ivy League championship game on Sunday, were presumably the last
teams in.

Bubble teams Penn State, Cornell, Fairfield and Villanova were
left on the outside looking in.

"As always [the toughest part] was with the bottom guys; who's
getting in and who's not getting in, and also what to do with
UMass," tournament selection committee chair Tony Seaman said on
ESPNU's selection show when asked which decisions were the hardest.
"I've been doing this for four years and this was our toughest year
with more teams that deserved to get in and not a lot that
separated anybody."

The CAA champion Minutemen (15-0) are seeded sixth and host
Colgate. Seaman said UMass' weak strength of schedule was a
determining factor for their seed, and that Denver's strong
schedule helped the Poineers' cause. Seaman said Princeton's
"stable" RPI of 10 helped them get a bid, along with wins over
Cornell and two wins over Brown, which had beaten the Big Red late
in the season.

Prior to this weekend, Yale and Syracuse figured to be left out
of the tournament, but each won its conference tournament and an
automatic qualifying bid to put them in the big dance. Yale beat
Princeton on Sunday, and the Orange dispatched St. John's in the
Big East final on Saturday after the Red Storm upset Notre Dame in
the semifinal round.

Canisius (6-7) beat Siena in the MAAC championship game on
Sunday to grab that conference's automatic qualifier. The Golden
Griffins will travel to Loyola for the Greyhounds first NCAA home
game since 2000.

Stony Brook, despite also having a losing record (7-9), makes
the field by way of winning the America East conference, making
Canisius and the Seawolves the third and fourth teams in history to
make the tournament with a sub-.500 record.